Rational
by Voice Number Seven
Summary: You always complained I was too rational, that I thought with my head and not my heart. But lately, nothing is rational anymore, and I don't know what to make of that.  oneshot; rated T for safety


**Rational**

**Summary:** You always complained I was too rational, that I thought with my head and not my heart. But lately, nothing is rational anymore, and I don't know what to make of that.

**Disclaimer:** Bones does not belong to me. If it did, the season premiere would have been WAY different.

I was the rational one, between the two of us. We were both adept at logic, but it was an undisputed fact that I was the rational one. You always complained I was too rational, that I thought with my head and not my heart. I don't remember how often I corrected you—one thinks with their head in all aspects; the heart is simply a muscle tasked with job to deliver blood all over the body. But now… that doesn't matter anymore, Booth. Accuracy… accuracy doesn't matter anymore.

Rational meant not letting my emotions get the better of me. You know I despised the very notion. And yet, sometimes I did. I have cried. I have laughed. I have loved. At one point, I didn't believe in love like you did, Booth. I was convinced it was merely a chemical reaction taking place in the brain, attraction between pheromones—that was the rational part of me speaking, thinking. Rational meant not letting myself recognize my emotions.

I recognized some, of course. I have been angry. I have felt the inexplicable need to hug someone. I have been excited. I have missed my friends. It only hurt all the more that such an awful thing would allow us to meet again. Awful only because, at the moment, I do not feel rational. I suppose you would be proud of me for that, but lately, nothing is rational anymore, and I don't know what to make of that.

I think it started when we said goodbye. When you took my hand at the airport, and reminded me unnecessarily where we would meet, one year later. When you took my hand, and we couldn't bring ourselves to say that simple word—"goodbye"—I made a wish. It was irrational to make that wish, I realize that now, although at the time, I wanted nothing more than the thing I wished for. That was why I wished for it. Maybe you might call that desperate. Until recently, I wouldn't know what to call it, but…

…I wished with all my might that you would kiss me.

I wished that you would kiss me, and hold me close, and tell me you wouldn't go, and tell me you didn't want me to go either. And now, after everything that has happened, I wish, more than anything in the world, that you had said that to me. If you had said that to me, I wouldn't be here, writing my 356th letter to you.

Yes, even after I received the news, I continued writing. I wrote a letter to you every day until I got those news. I know now you never got a majority of them. But the ones you did get… you replied to every single one. You don't know how I cherished those words, or how strange it felt to cherish them. How strange it was to be irrational, and not mind.

Maybe you do know. Maybe you looked at my words, and knew to read between the lines, knew to read the words I didn't know I was writing.

You were always good at that, seeing the things I couldn't, because you _did_ read between the lines. I colored inside the lines, most of the time, and my view was obstructed for that.

That coloring was what stopped the tears, at first. Daisy didn't understand why I didn't break down. She cried while I told her what happened. She cried while we packed. On the plane, and at the airport when Sweets picked us up, she cried. I couldn't bring myself to. I just couldn't. I was being rational. I was rationalizing that it had happened while you were doing the thing you were convinced you needed to do, that you were doing your goddamn duty instead of holding me close and telling me you didn't care about anything else.

You were doing what you thought you were supposed to be. The rational side understands somewhat. The irrational side kicked and screamed, as you liked to say, that there was something amiss even as it cherished every letter on every sheet of paper in every envelope you addressed to me. It said that those letters—"Dear Bones,"—were saying something other than the greeting you so invariably meant. You only meant to say hello; part of me wanted to convince itself you were saying so much more.

I think there was one moment when you almost did. Why didn't you?

I don't know the reasons. Now, the reasons can only be guessed. Sweets has tried to assure me. Hodgens has tried to assure me. As have Daisy, and Wendell, and Cam. Even Angela insisted—she came straight out and said it. She yelled at me because I'd wasted my chance.

She knew I'd been writing to you. She knew of all 355 letters. She knew that, occasionally, I wrote more than once a day. She knew I didn't cry; not when I got the news, not when I said hello to everyone, not when they carried the casket to the grave. But I did cry. I cried later, in my apartment, with such a feeling of being alone that I knew was not rational, and I am crying now. Nothing anyone said could comfort me then, nor now, and I doubt I will ever completely part from this feeling. Even after I die, if my soul is possibly still intact as you claimed, I will have that.

To be honest, I hadn't written to you since the funeral. I refused. There was no point, I said. You didn't want my letters. You couldn't want my letters, no matter how much I wished you'd say, write, or even think one more word to me. What were you thinking in that moment? Were you thinking of your duty? Were you thinking of Parker? Were you thinking of everyone at the Jeffersonian, your friends and your colleagues?

Or… or were you thinking of me?

It's a foolish thing to think, I know. It's an irrational thought, but… the idea that it might be true. That very idea sustained me for a while. It sustained my "heart" while food and drink sustained my body, while work sustained my mind. The idea that, in that one moment, you thought of me, it kept a part of me alive inside while everything else withered at me.

Some people would laugh, reading those words from my hand, especially if they knew not of what was to come, or what already has. Maybe they would laugh at me for the recipient of the letter, because they know this letter will never leave its envelope. Yes, I'll put it in an envelope, I will stamp and address, and then I will place it in a box, along with your favorite bobble head and your belt buckle, and I will seal these away in my closet for a day when I am old and gray, and I need that feeling again.

I don't know how many feelings this will contain in the years to come. When I first learned of it, a part of me thought there was a joke being played in poor taste. It was Angela's tears on the phone that convinced me. It was that she couldn't speak past them, but passed the phone on to Hodgens, whose voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him, who sounded so forlorn and so lost I had to believe it.

We were on the first flight back. I paid out two seats on that flight, with enough money for a nice weekend somewhere expensive. The couple didn't know the reason, but I'm sure they knew I was what you would call desperate.

I arranged everything, with the help of the others. Again, my irrationality wins out—it didn't want their help, especially at first, when the wound was fresh and new. It didn't want the kind words. It wanted to crawl away and cry in some corner. It knew, it didn't think, it _knew_ that I had been closest to you. This was my business, none of theirs. I was the one that would miss you the most.

And to think you never said goodbye.

When I told Angela of my irrational wish, she yelled at me for it. Not for making the wish, but rather for not saying so myself. For not saying the fact I realized while standing with the soldiers and my friends and watching the flag slowly descend beneath the earth. For not saying it while I had the chance. For not saying the three words I should have, when you almost said them. For not saying "please stay" and not realizing it sealed our fate.

Because only now, after everything that happened, after everyone has apologized and you will never smile at me again, I am able to say it. Only now that you're a dead man, and you will never hear these words, or see them, or know I'm thinking them. Only now, I'm able to say…

I love you, Seeley Booth.

I love you and I don't give a damn that it's irrational, because right now, rational doesn't matter.

And for the first time, I can truly say,

Love,

Your Temperance Brennan,

Your Bones

**READ AND REVIEW PLEASE**


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